


Coping

by CaptainLeBubbles



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-03
Updated: 2015-03-03
Packaged: 2018-03-16 02:58:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3471881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainLeBubbles/pseuds/CaptainLeBubbles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wash is too young to be so old.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coping

**Author's Note:**

> Follows from the first scene of [this](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3471803)fic. It was supposed to be Carolina teasing Wash about Maine but... yeah, things don't go according to plan.
> 
> According to my own headcanon, Wash was nineteen when he joined Project Freelancer and twenty-one when Epsilon was implanted in his head.
> 
> Pairing listed is only past unrequited.

o/o

“Epsilon, do you mind jumping to Tucker for awhile? I want some alone time before bed.”

“Hm? Oh, yeah, sure.”

There was some fiddling between helmets, and Church was now occupying Tucker's instead of Carolina's. This suited him; Carolina needed her sleep, but Church didn't feel like sitting in the dark running numbers and liked to spend time with his friends without Carolina having to be there too. He bid her good night as she left; the crowd had been dwindling for an hour now, until it was just Tucker, Caboose, Sarge, and Donut left behind. She waved at them all and left as well.

It didn't take long to track down Wash; he was on the balcony, looking out over the city absently. He looked small without all his armor, and when he turned at her approach she was forcibly reminded of just how _young_ he was. She gave him a small smile and joined him to lean on the railings beside him.

“Do you wanna talk about it?”

“There's nothing to talk about.” Wash's eyes fell to his hands, gripped too tightly on the railings; he forced himself to loosen them. “It's just not something I like to think about, that's all. Having another person go crazy inside your head isn't exactly the best of memories. When that person turns up later and seems perfectly all right while you're still... broken, it just makes it worse. But I'm fine.”

“Still broken?”

He turned a stern look at her. She frowned. His eyes were way too old for someone so young, she thought. And they shouldn't have that many lines around them, and his brow shouldn't be so perpetually furrowed. She missed the wide-eyed, innocent kid he'd been when he'd first come to them and wondered if he still kept pictures of cats in his personal space, or if Epsilon had driven all that sweetness out of him, too, along with everything else.

The Director'd had a lot to answer for. Wash's innocence should have been on his list of victims.

He turned back to staring out at the city. “My head isn't a nice place to be anymore.”

“Is anyone's?” Carolina turned to lean back on the rails. “You know he didn't mean to hurt you, don't you?”

“It's not like he did it on purpose.”

“I don't mean then, I mean tonight. He was just trying to tease you.”

“I know. I just... don't like thinking about that either.”

She watched him curiously. It was the freckles, she decided, and the perpetual helmet hair that refused to behave. They made him look even younger than he was. She remembered a party once, a fancy one that required dress uniforms. North and York had spent nearly two hours trying to convince his hair to lie flat for it before finally giving up. Even now it refused to behave, though he'd been running his hands through it all night, a nervous habit, and that hadn't helped.

There was grey in that hair now, silvery white glints in among the pale blond. He was too young for those, too.

“You really didn't know?”

Silence. Carolina moved closer, let her hand rest against Wash's on the rail, so that they were just touching. “He was crazy about you. But you were so young, so _sweet_ , that he was afraid of ruining that.”

That didn't seem to help. It only succeeded in deepening the frown that always seemed in place on Wash's face. Carolina wondered if Wash was even capable of smiling anymore, proper smiling, not that tired tug at the corner of his lips that he usually did.

“It's for the best,” he said quietly. “If he had.. it only would have made things hurt worse when..” He trailed off, and shook his head. “I'm going to bed. Good night, Carolina.”

“Good night.”

o/o

Caboose and Tucker hadn't yet returned to the room the trio had been assigned, so Wash was free to get ready for bed without interruption, for once. Once he'd crawled into his bunk, he lay there staring up at the ceiling, thoughts chasing themselves around in his head while he waited for sleep.

Sleep didn't come. He was too used to his friends- back in the canyon, he'd had Caboose talking to himself while in the top bunk, Tucker jacked off quietly (or what he thought was quietly). Then they'd joined up with the Federal Army and he had Sarge's snores- loud, buzz-saw snores with mumbled curses about the Blues intermingled- and Donut's own countermelody of choppy snores. He'd found them all annoying at first, but they had proven effective in drowning out his own thoughts, and they had come to reassure him.

Now he lay awake in silence that granted plenty of room for his thoughts to come to the forefront of his mind.

It was the AI's. It always came back to them, when he tried to figure out what had gone wrong. The AI's and that _damned_ leaderboard. If they hadn't been pitted against each other so constantly, things wouldn't have gone so badly. If it hadn't been for Sigma, things never would have gone to hell. If it hadn't been for Tex, they'd never have fallen apart.

If it hadn't been for the Director, they'd still be a family.

And maybe Maine would have gotten the nerve to approach Wash, and Carolina wouldn't have pushed them all away trying to outdo Tex, and South and North wouldn't have had a wedge driven between them and CT wouldn't have left (she was still Connie in his head, sweet Connie who cared too much, who cried over movies about dogs and wrote letters to her parents every night and had only joined the army so that she could make the world safer). York would still be alive and Wyoming would still just be a dork and Four-Seven-Nine would still be bitching at them from the pilot seat...

His hands clenched into fists in the thin sheet. And the Director and the Counselor would still seem like benevolent leaders, pushing them to be the best they could for the best of all, instead of the sadistic, selfish, _murderous bastards_ they actually were.

Wash's head was starting to throb. He dug the heels of his hands into his eyes, willing the thoughts away. He really didn't want another breakdown.

He heard the sounds of Caboose and Tucker returning. They were chattering sleepily, but their speech broke off when they spotted him.

“You okay, Wash?”

He kept his hands pressed to his eyes, trying to concentrate on his breathing, on counting slowly. _Just focus_. “I'm fine. Just...”

He trailed off, and heard Tucker make a small noise of comprehension. “Okay. Do you want us to leave you alone, or would you prefer if we stayed here?”

It was surprisingly mature. Wash was touched. “Stay,” he said quietly. “Talk to me. Caboose. Tell me about-” He cast around for a topic, one that Caboose couldn't accidentally bring back to painful things. “Tell me about your home. You said you grew up on the moon?”

A wide grin spread across Caboose's face- Wash could practically see it, even with his eyes closed- and he began chattering excitedly about home. Only about a third of it sounded true, but that didn't matter. Wash just needed something to drown out his thoughts. Caboose was good for that.

Gradually, Wash began to relax, and slowly lowered his hands and sat up. Tucker was getting ready for bed while Caboose rambled- the topic had by now swapped to a disjointed story about visiting his grandparents on Jupiter during a zombie invasion (Wash exchanged a look with Tucker that clearly said “we don't ask”). Wash sighed and let some of the tension leave his shoulders. He felt a little better, now.

o/o

By the time Tucker and Caboose had finally gone to bed and dropped off, Wash had calmed down and felt more like himself- the himself he was with them, not the himself that lived on the edge of a knife, waiting for the next breakdown, or the himself he had been once upon a time, wide-eyed innocence and naivety. He put that thought aside; following that train led only to madness.

He still couldn't sleep, though, so he pushed the window open and half-sat on the sill, watching the other two blues. Caboose reminded him of a child, footy pajamas and all, curled around a pillow and talking in his sleep. On the top bunk was Tucker, sprawled out naked (Wash couldn't get him to cut that out, and the fact that he shared a room with two other men didn't seem to put him off at all) and drooling on his own pillow. Wash didn't let his sight linger on Tucker for too long.

“Do you wanna talk about it?”

Wash bit back a swear, not wanting to wake up his teammates, and spun to glare at Epsilon, who had appeared above Tucker's helmet. “What are you doing here?” he hissed. “Why are you in Tucker's helmet?”

“Carolina wanted some alone time and I didn't feel like shutting off. Didn't think I ought to pop out while you were freaking out so I stayed put. You're okay, right?”

“I'm fine. It just takes awhile to come down sometimes.”

Silence. It moved around the room and lay over them, weighing them down with the mass of it. Epsilon was very, very aware that he was the reason Wash was the way he was, but how could he even begin to address that? It wasn't like he'd done it on purpose; hell, he was already breaking down when they put him in Wash's head to begin with. But that didn't change the way things were, and sometimes just being around Epsilon at all sent Wash off- he hid it well, but Epsilon could see his vitals, could see the tension that kept him a tightly coiled spring and noticed the way he disappeared, sometimes for ages, after a long interaction.

Epsilon blinked, glowing green for just a second. “Hey, uh, I found this in Carolina's data files. Thought you might like to see it.” He blinked out, and the image was replaced by a photo. Wash stared, a small, tired smile tugging at his lips.

“She still has that?”

The photo had been taken in the early days, before everything had started falling apart, when they were still a family. A mission had gone well and they were all feeling pumped, and York had decided that the best way to blow off their excess adrenaline was by going out on the town for an evening of leave. And they had agreed, because York was hard to say no to sometimes, and the Director had allowed it, because back then he had occasionally let them have fun.

Somewhere between the first and second bar York'd found a photo booth. How he'd persuaded them all into it was still a mystery, though Wash would put money on the alcohol, but they'd agreed, even Maine, even Wyoming, and the nine of them had crammed into the tiny booth, squeezed together uncomfortably while the camera took picture after picture.

Wash was grinning in the picture. York had him in a headlock, mussing up his hair even more than usual, while on one side of him North and South did some strange double pose and on the other, Florida had just realized that Connie's chosen pose had the side effect of her resting her boobs on his head. It hadn't been intentional, but it had been funny when the next picture on the reel had been Florida awkwardly trying to pull away, only to overbalance and- in the next picture- land face first in Maine's crotch.

They'd all kept a copy of the pictures, but Wash didn't have his anymore. They'd been wiped, like the rest of his data storage unit, when the EMP had gone off. He felt a pang as he realized that- the loss was almost a physical pain.

The picture blinked out and Epsilon reappeared. He was relieved to find that Wash was smiling, or doing a Wash equivalent of a smile.

“Epsilon, do you mind sending a copy of that picture to my storage unit? And the rest from that reel as well.”

“Sure thing, buddy.” He blinked green, and gave a thumbs up. “There you go.”

“Thanks.” He glanced at the others, and moved over to his bed. “I think I'm going to try getting some sleep. And uh, thanks. For the picture and... bothering.”

Church shrugged and made a vague noise bidding Wash good night before blinking off. Wash slid under the covers and lay back, a great deal more relaxed than when he'd entered. He folded his hands on his chest and let his eyes close slowly, counting his breaths until finally sleep claimed him.

**Author's Note:**

> Having never suffered ptsd myself, I can't promise that my depiction here is accurate. However, having dealt with nervous breakdowns multiple times in the past, I _can_ vouch for Wash's coping methods for staving one off. So, uh. Take that as you will.


End file.
